Allchin Suggests Vista Won't Need Antivirus — During a telephone conference with reporters yesterday, outgoing Microsoft co-president Jim Allchin, while touting the new security features of Windows Vista, which was released to manufacturing yesterday, told a reporter that the system's …

The Sounds of Windows Vista — When you try the RTM version of Windows Vista, you will notice that something changed between the last release candidate and the final product — we added new sounds to the 45 places where Windows provides an audio cue to the user, including a new Windows Vista Start …

Another committee takes the "soul" out of Robert Fripp — Alec Saunders notes that there's not much of Robert Fripp inside the audio in Windows Vista (he was the guitarist who recorded the four notes that you'll soon be sick of. They'll probably be used in all the marketing and are the startup sound for Vista).

Windows Vista system sounds — When Robert Fripp worked his magic on Windows Vista, everyone knew Vista is going to sound different and hopefully better. Now that Vista is literally peeking around the corner, not that it's possible for a software to peek or even exist in the physical world …

For Start-Ups, Web Success on the Cheap — When Seth J. Sternberg and two colleagues started Meebo, a Web-based instant-messaging service, they didn't go looking for venture capitalists. Using their credit cards, they financed the company themselves to the tune of $2,000 apiece.

Google... the OS for Advertising — Traditional media companies are in a persistent state of confusion when it comes to Google. The question that keeps these media executives up at night is... is Google a friend or a foe? If recent conversations I've had with such executives are any indication …

Microsoft's Zune Challenges iPod — Player Could Lure Converts, — But It Makes Compromises — And Is Missing Some Features — Next week, Microsoft Corp. will launch the most serious challenge ever mounted to Apple Computer's iPod and iTunes juggernaut in digital music.

ISPs 'should be responsible' for hacker attacks — Internet service providers (ISPs) should be made legally liable for the damage caused by "denial of service" (DoS) attacks carried out via their networks, a leading internet lawyer says. — A DoS attack involves taking down a website …

What the Democrats' win means for tech — update It was the narrowest of Republican margins in the U.S. Senate that doomed a crucial vote on Net neutrality earlier this year. — By an 11-11 tie, a GOP-dominated committee failed in June to approve rules requiring that all Internet traffic …

ReviewMe Launches: A Better PayPerPost — ReviewMe, which is a PayPerPost-like service that pays bloggers to write about advertisers' products, just launched moments ago. The company is backed by TechCrunch-sponsor Text-Link-Ads, which was recently acquired. — ReviewMe has a somewhat different model that PayPerPost.

Skype 3.0 (beta) starts the communication platform wars. — This week saw the launch of Skype 3.0 (beta) and on the surface there is very little new to get excited about other than a new plug-in manager. The real changes in this new version seem to have taken place under the hood where Skype …

Oh, the emails you'll get... A management consultant at Bain wrote me a nice email, that included the following sentence: … I didn't understand a thing he wrote. The email contained a lot of words ("benchmarking," "outside in," "performance metrics," "best practice," "process and organization" …

Blog Pimpin — Blogs, uhh, good God, what are they good for..... (sung to the tune of the song War)... Has anyone noticed lately that more blogs posts are about other blogs, which are writing about whats being reported in other blogs than about something original from the author ?

Alvey, Calacanis Sell Blogsmith To AOL; Cuban Had Stake — Brian Alvey and Jason Calacanis confirm that they have sold software company Blogsmith to AOL for an undisclosed sum; Valleywag, which reported the sale first, puts it at $4-5 million. When Weblogs Inc. was sold to AOL last year …